


I Bear Record of Myself

by Aromene



Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, One Shot, afterwards, all the feelings, post ep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-03 04:54:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4087690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aromene/pseuds/Aromene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To Henry, it's a long story. To Abe, it's a collection of tales. For Jo, it's the truth she's long been denied. Post-episode: The Last Death of Henry Morgan</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Bear Record of Myself

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains three things I promised myself I would never do. The first is a quote from the Bible. The second is the fact that I wrote this in the first place. And the third is that, for All the Truth!fic, it contains a certain lack of truth, and a horrible amount of introspection.

John 8:14

_Though I bear record of myself, yet my record is true: for I know whence I came, and whither I go; but ye cannot tell whence I come, and whither I go._

 

‘It’s a long story,’ he says, sounding both apologetic and nervous.

Jo just raises an eyebrow. She expected nothing less from Henry; everything is a long story with him. But this is the first time she’s felt like she might actually hear some of that story.

‘I’ve got time,’ she responds, glancing over a Abe as he butts into the conversation over Henry’s shoulder.

He grins at her; wide and pleased and just a bit nervous himself. ‘Well, I guess I better make us something to eat. Come in, come in, Jo,’ Abe beckons.

He leads her through the shop and upstairs to the kitchen, pushing her towards the sofa. Henry is trailing behind with hesitant steps, nervously wringing his hands together. Whatever this is – whatever this story is – Jo both desperately wants to hear it and would really rather leave now. It’s going to mean change. A part of her feels that she and Henry have done rather well, keeping their own secrets, while still maintaining a friendship. This might destroy that. But the rest of her wants to know – _needs_ to know – and is willing to risk what they have for the chance that maybe there is _more_.

‘Drink!’ Abe says, so loudly Henry actually jumps. ‘Definitely a drink. Wine, Jo? Or something stronger?’ he stands half-way between the kitchen and the living room, not willing to take a step in either direction.

‘Yes, drinks,’ Henry agrees.

‘Wine will be fine, Abe,’ Jo says, because it’s obvious that someone has be calm and collected. Whatever the story is, Abe knows it all.

Henry sits down in the opposite chair, and for a moment she is disappointed at the distance. He looks everywhere but at her while Abe busies himself opening a bottle of merlot and decanting it out, finally bringing a glass to each of them.

Jo sets it on the coffee table in front of her without taking a sip. She wants to be clear-headed for this. Henry takes an immediately drink, and then another, still clutching the black and white photograph – all the evidence Jo has – in one hand.

‘So…where does the story start?’ she asks, trying to maintain the level voice they taught her at the academy when dealing with a suspect ready to bolt – or open fire.

Henry laughs, but there is no humour in the sound. ‘You’ll forgive me, Jo, for being bad at this. I haven’t had much practice for reasons that will become obvious.’

Abe, bustling around the kitchen trying not to be obvious, calls out ‘try the beginning!’

Henry smiles ruefully. ‘Yes, the beginning. But which one?’ he adds under his breath.

‘Whichever one you think is best,’ Jo tells him. She finds that her own hands are clutched together, nervous despite herself. Nervous and excited, perhaps.

Henry takes another sip of wine, and Jo thinks that he would probably prefer if it were brandy. ‘The beginning. The first beginning, I think. You will forgive me if I wander or become side-tracked. And Jo,’ he says, looking at her for the first time since they have come upstairs, ‘I would appreciate it immensely if you could hold your questions, at least for a few minutes.’

She doesn’t owe him much, not after all the lying he has done, but for what little she does she will give him this. ‘Okay,’ she says, suddenly reaching forward to take up her own wine glass; certain she is going to need it now.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever told you my birthday,’ Henry says, smiling slightly despite the situation. ‘It’s September 19th. We met after that, on the first case.’

Jo nods, but makes no other move to stop him. She gets it. She’s seen enough people in the interrogation room finally spilling it all. Sometimes the best thing to do is just to let them talk, no matter how much she wants to interrupt and question this statement or that. In this case, letting Henry talk is going to be harder than any of those situations, but necessary.

‘The year of my birth, however, well that is something else entirely. The beginning of it. The first beginning, at least.’ He takes a deep breath, reaching for the wine glass again and then thinking better of it. In the kitchen, Abe drops a pan with more force than is necessary. Henry glances over at his housemate.

‘Sorry,’ Abe says, low voice carrying across the open distance. ‘Just…tell her,’ he urges.

‘1779,’ Henry says, voice so sudden it takes Jo’s brain a moment to actually ‘hear’ what he’s just said.

She can’t stop the interruption, despite her best intentions. ‘1779?’ she asks, voice monotone.

Henry shrugs. ‘1779. I was born on September 19th 1779.’ He lets the revelation hang for a moment, unsure exactly what to say next. The next thing is, of course, that he died on April 7th 1814\. But he really feels he should give Jo a moment to breathe first.

‘Okay,’ she says, though nothing in her voice suggests it’s at all okay. In fact, her tone suggests she’s humouring him. That is better than Nora though, so he ploughs onwards.

‘I was a merchant’s son. My father owned a shipping company. A successful shipping company, by all accounts, except that in the early 19th century he began to ship slaves as well as goods.’

He can tell that has twigged with Jo. She flickers her eyes sideways and then back at him and takes a deeper breath than normal.

‘I discovered this and…protested. I boarded the next ship, the Empress of Africa, to do what I could for the next shipment of slaves. Ostensibly, it was to investigate the accommodations and ensure the captives were provided for. In reality…I wished only to find a way to free them, and end my father's business once and for all. ‘ Her gaze flickers again at the mention of the ship. Issac was not that long ago for either of them.

‘I do not know whether the events that resulted were intended by my father or not, but the captain of the ship was not a good man. A very uncaring man, in fact. He saw his cargo as nothing more than cattle and treated them as such.’ He pauses, taking a breath. Others might think it is easy for him to remember something so long past, but Henry still remembers it like it was yesterday. ‘One of the slaves became ill and the captain would not listen when I explained it was nothing more than starvation and malnutrition. He – ’ he swallows, takes in a deep breath to steady himself and ploughs onwards again. ‘He tried to kill the man. I protested.’

‘He stepped in front of the gun,’ Abe says, interrupting them both so suddenly that Jo jumps. Henry glares at his son.

‘Yes, _thank you_ , Abraham, I was getting to that. 

The older man just shrugs, non-apologetic as he sets a plate of cheese and French bread in front of them.

Jo takes a gulp of her nearly forgotten wine.

‘I did, as Abe says, step in front of the gun. And I was shot for my trouble.’ He raises his hand to his left shoulder; to the puckered wound that Jo has only once seen. Her eyes trace his movements and he knows she is remembering. 

‘The doctor, on Issac’s ship,’ she says, voice barely more than a whisper.

‘Yes,’ Henry agrees, voice full of admittance. ‘They tossed my body overboard; I didn’t know what happened to the ship after that. Not until…not until last month. I thought for certain they had all died. But I did die, in the ocean. I drowned. The bullet would have killed me, of course, had they not thrown me over.’ It’s an admonition he never shared with Abigail; there was no point in it and she was versed enough in battle wounds to have known the truth anyways. With Jo, however, he has promised himself he will tell her everything. Or everything she wants to know. ‘I woke in the water; waves tossing me about. I lost count, of course, but I think it was about seven or eight more times I drowned before another ship, that had been sailing south towards us, was close enough to rescue me. They took me with them to Africa, and onwards. We were gone nearly a year. I died three more times before I set foot in England again.’ He wants to tell her about Nora; to make her understand why this is so hard for him, but that is a conversation for later. ‘From the moment I was shot I have ceased to age. I am, and will always be, thirty-five years old, in appearance, if not in mind. Each time I die, my body disappears and I wake again in water. Here, in New York, it’s always the East River.’

He can see her put two and two together; her eyes widen slightly as she recalls all the times he was caught naked by the river and charged with indecency.

He glances through to the kitchen, to where Abe is bustling about making an early dinner. The cheese and bread are still untouched and Henry is not remotely hungry. He wonders if Jo will be, after this.

‘I’m immortal,’ he tells her, voice quiet and calm.

In reply, she takes another large gulp of wine, before putting the glass down on the table.

‘Henry –’ she starts, and then stops. He can well understand; he wouldn’t know what to ask next either. Instead of trying again, she leans over to pick up the picture he has placed down on the table in front of him, and he lets her.  ‘When was this taken?’ she asks instead.

Henry glances at his son again, a soft smile on his lips; the one he wears when he remembers the good times. ‘1945. In Germany.’

‘The end of the war,’ Jo murmurs, caressing the photo. ‘This is your wife?’

‘Yes,’ he says, because it’s the truth.

‘And your child?’ she asks again.

‘My son,’ he clarifies, glancing at Abraham again.

‘You said, when I talked about Sean and I, you said you and Abigail never had children.’ There is a note of hurt in her voice, as if this lie of his was somehow worse than all the others he’s told her. And maybe it is.

‘We didn’t. We…couldn’t. We adopted the baby. He was the only survivor of one of the concentration camps. Abigail…Abigail loved him immediately. Perhaps I did as well.’ From the kitchen, his son smiles at him. ‘We named him Abraham,’ Henry admits, anticipating the reaction.

For a moment Jo doesn’t seem to hear. But then she looks up at him, ‘Abraham?’ she asks, and turns towards the named man.

He waves slightly, spoon in one hand and oven mitt on the other. ‘You guys going to eat?’ he asks, apropos of nothing. ‘Food’ll be reading in ten.’

Jo tears her eyes away and back to Henry. ‘Your son?’ she asks, astonished and hurt and half a dozen other emotions he cannot put a name to.

‘My son,’ Henry says, putting seventy years of pride into his voice.

She looks at the photo again, eyes tracing the details of the faded image. ‘Your son. Henry, this is –’

Impossible? Unlikely? Unbelievable? He has no idea what word she intended to use, but it doesn’t matter. She can’t process what he’s told her; not yet at least.

‘Yes,’ he says, agreeing with the unspoken thought. ‘Yes, it is. I wanted to tell you Jo; from almost the first moment I met you. You know, you engender a great deal of respect and admiration in the people you meet. I knew, somehow, that I could trust you, but I wasn’t ready. It takes…more than a leap of faith to share this secret.’

‘Much more,’ she mutters under her breath and places the photo back on the table between them. It’s a representation of a gulf Henry is not certain they can fill…or jump over. ‘It explains a lot, you know,’ she comments dryly, glancing at him. ‘All those things you know, all those times you’ve avoided the question, all those lies about your past you tell. But Henry…this is _impossible_.’

And there it is. Not Nora’s reaction, not even Abigail’s, but rather the one he would expect from most people. Certainly the it was similar to Abraham’s, who had taken three days and several conversations before he was willing to believe his father could rise from the dead without a scratch on him.

‘Yes,’ he agrees, because Jo is right. ‘But even the impossible happens, and I am living proof of it. I have more; more photos, more documents, more records of my past. I am happy to show them to you. And Abraham can…can tell you more as well. He is the only other person, besides yourself, who knows my secret.’

He never wanted to burden her with this; if anything, it was his first reason for not telling her. Now, unless he has horribly underestimated her, she will have a secret she must take to her grave and he knows that is a hard thing to bear.

‘Have I got _stories_ ,’ Abraham says, once again interrupting them. ‘Food is ready, if either of you can manage to drum up an appetite. I can tell you a few of them, Jo, if you’d like.’

Abraham is open and welcoming; he always has been, unless he’s protecting his father. Jo reactions to that innate kindness with a small smile. ‘Maybe another time, thank you. I should…I should go.’

‘Naw, stay,’ Abe urges. ‘I mean, if you aren’t hungry, that’s fine; the food will keep, but take it from me, being on your own right now is not the best idea. You’ve got a million questions, and if you’d rather not ask Henry, I’m here to help.’ He sits down in an empty chair. ‘I was twelve when I found out myself. Took me three days to believe it; until then I thought Dad was a ghost. Now Mum, Mum believed him right from the start, but then I guess it made sense to her: how else could he explain having died in her arms and then returned to her.’

Abe has a talent for storytelling, and despite herself Jo lets out a small laugh at this, trying to picture it. She turns sombre a moment later. ‘You died in her arms?’

Henry blushes faintly. It’s still not his best moment. It’s not his worst moment either. ‘I was…defending her honour, as we used to call it. I guess taking on a man a foot taller than I was not my brightest idea at the time. He…I bled to death, that time; a stab wound. Abigail was frantic, but I didn’t have time to explain that it would be all right. When I woke up in the river, afterwards, I thought it best to leave; there was no way I could return to her, a ghost of her husband. But I couldn’t leave without saying goodbye. She caught me kissing Abe goodnight. I thought…I thought she would scream or yell and wake up the neighbours, but she just hugged me and told me it would be all right. She never asked, after that; I told her, of course, but she never asked.’

He realises only when he is finished that it perhaps sounds like he is trying to tell Jo how she should be reacting to his news. ‘She accepted me, much more than I deserved. Anyone else would have run screaming.’

‘I’m not the screaming type,’ Jo says dryly. ‘But I’m not Abigail either.’

‘No,’ Henry agrees, promptly. ‘And I would never expect you to be. But you are a person I consider a friend. A very good friend. Perhaps my closest these days.’ He’s treading on dangerous ground. He trusts Jo not to tell his secret, but he is also trusting her not to run away, and that is the part he is less certain of. Appealing to her good nature is a bit of a cheat, but he does it anyways. He feels that, if he can keep her here for a few more hours; if he can just but explain his life to her, then she will be able to understand. If she leaves now, she may never understanding, even if she believes.

Jo nods, accepting. ‘The reason you’re trusting me with this…story, I assume?’

‘The very reason,’ Henry agrees. ‘I know you may never be able to understand, Jo, but as long as you believe I am telling you the truth…’

‘I’m not there yet,’ she cuts in, but there’s nothing behind the words: no malice or anger, simply a statement. ‘I’m not there yet, but…but I’ll get there. Henry, you’ve lied to me about a lot of things; _a lot_ of things.’ He nods, agreeing. ‘But I don’t believe you are the sort of person to make up a fantastical story in place of the truth, in the end. And…it does explain this photograph. So I’ll get there, but it’s a lot to take in.’

‘It really is,’ Abe agrees, ‘even when you’ve been alive for as much of it as I have. But, come on Jo, ask me a question. Or I’ll tell you about the time Henry Ernest Hemingway stole Henry’s girlfriend.’

‘She was _not_ my girlfriend,’ Henry admonishes his son.

Jo raises an eyebrow; not saying yes, but not saying no either. Abe takes it as an affirmative.

Food entirely forgotten, Abe launched into a – mostly – true story about how Henry met Hemmingway and how Ernest made off with a woman of Henry’s acquaintance who might have, possibly, had an interest in the good doctor, but, was mostly certainly _not_ Henry’s girlfriend. By the end of it Jo had a genuine smile on her face and was engaged in the story. It was a blessing, really, that Abe had resorted to one of the few adventures that had not resulted in Henry’s death. But then, his son always had been good at judging a room, ex-wife not withstanding. 

‘That’s one of the more exciting tales of my father’s grand adventures, I’m afraid. Most of them are rather boring.’ They hadn’t been boring when Abraham was ten, but things change as children grow. Abraham had now had exciting adventures of his own.

Jo’s glass of wine is gone now, and Henry is feeling a bit more clear-headed himself. They’re both more relaxed too. Her earlier posture of a rigid back and nervous hands are gone; she’s leaning forward lapping up everything Abe is telling her and a part of Henry that was certain this would end badly, disappears.

They fell into uncomfortable silence. Abe seemed uncertain about launching into another story and Henry was uncertain whether to break the silence or not. For her part, Jo seemed to be drumming up with courage to ask a question. 

It was not the one he would have guessed.

‘How many times have you died, Henry? Since we first met.’

He answers honestly before he can fully consider the repercussions. ‘Seven, since that first case. I died that night on the roof of Union Station. Or rather, I died falling off the roof of Union Station.’

Jo does not flinch, but she does frown. ‘That’s a lot of times, Henry. Too many times.’

‘I don’t seek death. I assure you, I experience it the same as anyone else, I just return afterwards alive and well. But I don’t enjoy dying. I do it only when necessary; when I think it will save a life.’ That part is mostly true, at least. There have been times he has simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, as with the subway accident the day before he and Jo met. But he’s not going to tell her about that one, unless she asks. He is most certainly not going to recount every one of his experience to her; he doesn’t enjoy remembering most of them, and she certainly doesn’t need to be left thinking about most of them.

‘That case we worked; the one where the guy died in his bed and we were checking the carbon monoxide levels in his room. You told me there were worse ways to die. You told me – ’ And now he can see that she gets it. That he wasn’t lying or fantasizing to her that day.

‘Yes. There are worse ways to die. I think I’ve experienced all of them. Death was more…horrific, in earlier times. Certainly more creative, for some people. Having said that, murderers these days never cease to horrify me.’

She nods, processing that. ‘Henry I –’ she pauses, wringing her hands nervously. Abe doesn’t move a muscle, as if worried he’ll spook her if he so much as breathes loudly. ‘This is a lot. I’m not…I believe you, I think. I mean, why would you lie about this? There are much easier lies to tell; I think I’ve heard a lot of them. No, I think you’re telling me the truth, but it’s…a lot.’

Truer words have never been spoken.

‘Yes. It is. I don’t expect you to be…alright with this, Jo. It is a lot to deal with and…I don’t want this to be your burden.’

She raises her eyes to meet his, the first time she has solidly looked at him since his story started. ‘It is, though, Henry; don’t you see?’

He does. He wishes he didn’t, but he does. He has told her a secret she must keep with her life and by doing so he’s endangered her. Not from Adam; not anymore, but from the rest of the world. And that is almost worse.

He nods softly. ‘I’m sorry. Sorry to have lied to you for so long, but also sorry that I have now burdened you with the truth.’

She smiles, ruefully. ‘I’m not. I...thank you, for telling me. But I think I need to go home now. I need to…think.’

They all rise at the same time. ‘Very well. Please Jo, take as much time as you need. And if you have questions, I am here. Abe is here as well.’ His son nods with enthusiasm.

‘And food, I’m here with food too.’

Sparing a small but genuine smile for the older man, Jo heads towards the stairs. Giving her space, Henry allows Abe to see her out. He sits back down again, reaching for his abandoned wine glass before realising it’s empty. He picks up the photograph instead.

‘Oh Abigail, I think you would have liked Jo. I wish you could be here to meet her.’ Sighing with a thousand regrets, he caresses the black and white memory in his hands. Jo is not Abigail, and that’s a good thing. But he hopes, that like Abigail, she’ll come to accept him even if it takes time. He’s told her all his secrets now.

All except one.


End file.
